Richard Lovett: Phantom Sense

Happy-hour found us again in the lounge: just Denise and me, no alcohol, waiting. I wanted the lounge at its fullest when the alarms went off. The more confused people filling stairwells and elevators, the better.

Her part of the plan was the simplest. Thanks to Laurel’s bag of goodies, her purse was full of smoke pellets—easy-to-use ones, made for paintball and for training firefighters. Better for our purposes than the military kind because they were smaller and non-toxic.

Denise, again in her schoolmarm glasses and tight bun—home-dyed a rather severe gray this time—would hit the eighteenth floor. That was a hotel floor, so she’d be looking for a supply closet, or better, a maid’s cart with a full trash bag. If she could do it without getting caught, she’d light a trash fire and supplement it with enough smoke pellets to make an impressive smudge. Then she’d be down the nearest stairwell, pulling fire alarms and dropping more pellets—anything to increase the confusion. Meanwhile, I’d go to the twentieth floor and wait for the alarms.

By 6:30, the lounge was standing-room only. Denise looked around. “Time?”

I nodded, reached across the table, took her hand. “Be careful. Stick to the plan and let me be the one to improvise. It’s what I do… did.” Her hand felt warm, natural. I gave it the tiniest of squeezes. “I—” My throat felt blocked, the words trapped. “I never—”

She squeezed back. “I know.” She gave a tight-lipped smile.

“Yeah.” There really wasn’t any more to say. “Let’s go get her.”

No battle plan ever goes off without a hitch. This one’s was an unexpectedly long wait for a second elevator, after Denise’s had left. Maybe I should have used the same one she did, but that would have left me on the twentieth floor, with nothing to do while waiting for the alarm.

As it was, I’d barely stepped off when the alarms sounded. Distant at first, muffled through multiple floors, then ear-splitting. I pulled the striker pin on a smoke pellet and tossed it in one of those useless brass wastebaskets hotels, banks, and convention centers love so much. Found another wastebasket on the far side of the lobby and dropped one in it, too.

Down the hall, a door popped open and a head peered out.

“Fire!” I yelled. “Get everyone out!”

Then I ran the opposite way, shouting and banging on doors. This was a condo floor, but it had a supply room, unlocked, as I’d hoped. I wrenched open the door, pulled down a shelf of paper towels, wadded them up in a big pile, and struck a match. Tossed in a half dozen smoke pellets for good measure, along with a couple of interesting-looking aerosol cans. By the time I left, one of the cans had already produced a satisfying bang, the sprinklers were starting to fire up, both in the closet and the hallways, and the smoke was thick enough that other people, hurrying for stairwells or elevators, were merely shapes in the gloom.

I found a stairwell at the end of the hall and pushed through. No panic bar, but a fire alarm, which I pulled in passing. No security cameras anywhere in sight. I’d not seen any yesterday, either, except on the elevators. Either this place had really good, hidden security, or the bare minimum. Hopefully the latter. Otherwise, even if we got Cora out, I was going to have a lot of explaining to do. Not the way I wanted to find out how good Laurel’s police connections really were.

The stairwell smelled like the Fourth of July. Apparently I’d hit the same one that, hopefully, had already led Denise to the basement.

The door snicked shut behind me, and I tested it. Locked. Damn. That meant it would be the same on Jerret’s floor. I’d been hoping the lack of panic bars meant no automatic locks, but touring the place yesterday, there’d been no way to find out. I dropped down a flight, suddenly glad for Laurel’s gun. But just as I got to the first landing, the door flew open, and I found myself staring down at a wiry, tough-looking man with a beard shaved into tiger stripes and what looked like a champagne glass shaved into the side of his head. A fashion-model-gorgeous Asian woman was behind him, in jeans and a silk blouse.

“Shit, Ray,” he said into a phone as I pressed backward against the wall, hoping he wouldn’t look up. “It’s real… Yeah… Yeah…”

“Yeah, it’s real,” the woman said. “Stay here and get cooked if you want.” She pushed by and clattered down into the smoke, pausing a few steps later to pull off her high heels.

Champagne-hair ignored her. “Forget that Jerret guy, bro. All he does is stay with his bitch ‘n’ all those flies. What the hell good’s he done us… ?” He stepped backward toward the corridor. “We really ought to get out of here.”

I was on the move even as the door started swinging shut. Even so, I barely managed to get to it. For a whole minute afterward, I held it, only millimeters from clicking shut, as several groups of people pounded down the stairs, some glancing at me, others fixated on getting down.

Alone again, I pulled a bandana out of my pocket and put it on, partly as additional disguise, partly to cut the fumes. I pulled the pins on three more smoke pellets, then opened the door just wide enough to toss them through. No yells, so apparently the hallway was now vacant. Blocking the door open with my foot, I lit a couple of strings of lady-finger firecrackers with a cigarette lighter, tossed them inside, and followed them up with a couple of M80s. Happily, the nearly closed door saved most of my hearing, but Jerret had to feel like he was on the receiving end of my tripwire nightmare: concussion, smoke, shock—and probably a bunch of insects already knocked off-line.

Time for the coup de grace. I pulled out another of my Rite Aid supplies, a can of home-and-garden wasp spray, yanked open the door, and looked for bugs.

They were there, of course, on the ceiling. Jerret was probably already pretty well into a flashback—and I didn’t want to give him any chance to recover. If he hadn’t been in a secure room when the commotion began, he’d have responded by retreating to the safest place he could think of and shifting as many assets as possible to his perimeter. And it was hard to imagine he wouldn’t have Cora with him. I needed to find out which room they were in before the place was overrun with firefighters.

In one quick motion, I shot a jet of wasp spray at the flies. It was good stuff, and about half of them dropped instantly. More than I wanted—the plan depended on not killing them all—but Jerret’s reaction was instant: the equivalent to touching a hot burner. I zapped a couple more flies for good measure, but he was already pulling back, desperate to keep from losing any others.

I chased down the hallway, following the flies. Most were faster than me, but those that had gotten a partial dose of the bug killer were a bit wobbly, and even in the smoke I was able to keep them in sight. Then we reached a door—number 1903, a detached part of my mind noted—and they started diving into a gap beneath it. It wasn’t a huge one—when Jerret had cut it into the carpet, he must not have been thinking of a possible mass retreat—so there was a bit of a jam-up as flies were coming in from all directions. Clearly, he was putting the survival of his swarm ahead of maintaining his periphery.

This much I’d planned. Time now to improvise.

First, I shot as many of the remaining flies as I could with the spray. That confined Jerret’s remaining Sense to the room. There was a spyhole in the door, though he was probably still too shocked to think to use it. Nevertheless, I ducked sideways, out of sight. He’d have a gun, and might start shooting. The fire alarm was deafening, almost enough to put me into a flashback, and I knew what was going on. Jerret had to be over the edge.